Korsgaard's Criticism Of Moralism
* Critcism on Korsgaard's approach :export:
Korsgaard's claim that our self or `who we are' gives rise to morality, has met many objections. In this section, I will discuss three common objections that in my view are based upon a mistaken interpretation of how, in Korsgaard's theory, our practical identity gives rise to morality.
I will show how these critiques are based upon a similar interpretation of the self as the source of value in Korsgaard's theory. In this interpretation Korsgaard tries to ground morality in a self that stands outside of the perspective of morality. From this amoral perspective the self allegedly /constructs/ a moral practical identity.
** The Prichardian challenge
In his article /Moral scepticism and
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As we saw above, Korsgaard's argument for the categorical imperative starts from our capacity of reflectivity. Allan Wood, Brian Leuck and Sergio Tenenbaum, interpret her as argueing that from here, the individual agent /constructs/ morality through an individual act. And furthermore, they believe that this perspective does not contain any restrictions upon what law he chooses to legislate. The problem they point to is different from the Prichardian challenge, but it is based in the same interpretation of the self as a source of normativity.
Wood writes that in Korsgaard's argument the objective worth of humanity and of the moral law are created by human beings and are constituted by "an act or attitude of ours".[fn:103] In his reading of Korsgaard, the perspective of the individual agent is an amoral perspective. And the problem Wood points to is the problem that if the agent refuses to adopt the moral attitude or to construct the moral law, morality has no authority over him. The agent in this case would not be subject to the moral
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This criticism has as its main target Korsgaard's argument for humanity. Just like the criticims of Korsgaard's constructivism, Tenenbaum and FitzPatrick believe that morality in Korsgaard's theory is based upon something that the individual agent does. The difference is that they argue that even if the individual agent chooses to reason in the way that Korsgaard wants him to reason, this way of reasoning is flawed. Here I will shortly discuss their argument to show that it is based upon the interpretation of the self as the source of normativity that I am
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